Standing out in the cold - I try root retting stinging nettles

 Our stinging nettles take forever to die off in the winter.  It isn't until the hard freeze we get for a week to ten days after Christmas that they really start to die back, and even then there are hangers on.  

But come Feb, all but the most shelter nettle plants are standing corpses (with the little baby nettles already peaking up in the leaf litter).  A few days break from the rain and we can finally explore the root retting method for harvesting fibre.  

On my bookshelf, you will find,Yarn from Wild Nettles, by Birte Ford.  It's a great book with lots of ideas for, you guessed it - transforming stinging nettles into yarn.  It is from here I got the idea.

Finally, I caught the nettles at the perfect moment in our weather cycle - so it's time to see if it works.

Here's what happened:

I think I know why it didn't work. 

Retting happens as a combination of bacteria, yeast, fungus, and other invisible beasties break down the 'glues' that hold the fibre into the stems of the plant.  Most of the time, we do this fairly quickly with invisible beasties that enjoy warm weather (water or dew retting).  But for this method, Birte describes a cold weather method.  

Think lager vs ail.  Lager is fermented more slowly and at a colder temperature.

That's sort of what retting is - fermenting or a controlled rot.  Somewhere in between.  

The kind of microbes (invisible beasties) that we find in my climate are very different than where Birte lives.  

I'm going to keep trying different methods.  Next up is probably some pesto because finding good quality greens locally has been a challenge.  And pasta is kind of like yarn.  I'm sure I can stretch it a bit to justify it.

And then, we wait for the nettles to grow to try some more ideas.